Everyone was still raw with grief over the deaths of their companions at Victoria Station. One person was struggling more than the others, to come to terms with their loss, and that was Jin-Lee. Shanice had watched her earlier in the evening as Jackson had attempted in vain to console his lover. When he had attempted to embrace her, she had simply pushed him away. Trying to hide the fact that she was secretly watching the two of them, Janice had pulled her journal out, and then pretended to scribble down her thoughts whilst she watched the young couple from the corner of her eye. Jackson had tried to protest at her rejection and told her that, “That she couldn’t spurn her partners attempt at consoling her, after all it was something that normal couples did.” His statement had seemed to enrage the usually placid Jin-Lee, “Why don’t you try using that line on the cradle snatcher? I’m sure she will enjoy it. You just don’t get it, do you Jackson?” The young soldier had been shocked by her outburst, and was worried Penny might overhear his lover’s jealous curse, “Get what babe?” “That I was only with you so that I could be with Heather as well.” Her statement had shocked him, and it was said loudly enough for other members of the group to hear. “You don’t meant that Jin-Lee, that is just the grief making you say that.” “Yes I do Jackson, think about it? I grew up with Heather, we’ve been friends since infant school. I’ve known that I loved her since our early teens.” Jackson had sat open mouthed, not knowing what to say, so Jin-Lee had continued the conversation. “Look I’m sorry. I had no choice in deceiving you. I always knew that I would have to be content to love Heather from a distance; that she would always be straight. Then along came an apocalypse and a chance to be with her, even though it meant pretending to share you.” With her revelation over Jin-Lee had started to sob, Jackson still shocked and lost for words, simply stood and walked away; Jin-Lee hadn’t run after him, the young woman hadn’t known what to say, she knew that using him to be with Heather had been wrong, but she had done it anyway.
Now as she quietly stood up Shanice wondered why adults had a habit of doing harmful things to one another, ever since the virus had broken out. She fumbled with her backpack, and its contents, until her hand found what it was looking for. With Kathy making the decision earlier that the dog’s home was secure, she didn’t think it required members of the group to keep watch; she had however insisted that lights were not to be left on whilst they slept. Armed with a set of night vision goggles the little girl slowly made her way across the reception area of the ground floor. The World looked strange through the goggles, with everything basked in a hue of green shades. No one stirred as Shanice made it to the stairwell, and with everyone apart from Kathy and Morgan still fast asleep behind her Shanice relaxed just a little.
As she tip-toed up the single flight of lino covered steps Shanice had already decided she would make her way to the first office at the very start of the landing. She knew that Morgan and Kathy occupied the rear office; as long as she was quiet, she wouldn’t disturb them. She was thankful that the door to the room was already ajar; she didn’t fancy her chances of opening the fire door silently. After creeping inside, she moved past a row of chairs that were staggered around an empty presentation board. From her vantage point Shanice could see the construction site, in front of her, and to her right she could just make out the understated entrance to the Government bunker. A full moon gave her plenty of visibility to view the entire area before her; she was glad that there was no sign of life outside to disturb her from the tranquil view.
For what seemed like an eternity to her, Shanice stared up at the stars that were spread across the sky. Moments of tranquillity like this were now a luxury rarely bestowed upon them; the foreboding capital made sure of that. After only two weeks the city had already started to look like a forgotten wasteland; with peoples unwanted personal belongings spread everywhere around them and a landscape filled with uninterrupted fires the city had lost nearly all its lustre. A sudden movement from Shanice’s right pulled her from her thoughts. She half ducked as the first of the three zombies managed to dislodge the wedge holding the bunker entrance door in place, and exited from the bunker.
Unaware of the little girl that was watching them from the safety of the office the undead shuffle out into the open. All three wore the same uniform; were they from the group that had tried to gain entry earlier? Shanice watched them stumble around aimlessly, and found the fact that the two bringing up the rear were definitely following the lead zombie amusing. She was just about to afford herself a silent giggle when the lead zombies head erupted into a puff of black blood, causing it to fall to the floor, motionless. Seconds later the two followers were dealt with in the same manner, and by the time Shanice realised what had befallen them it was too late to move.
The sniper concealed in the construction site, eight hundred metres away from the dog’s home spoke into his radio, “This is Echo One over. The area is secure from the virus, over.” Within seconds the soldier’s radio spoke back to him. “Affirmative, Echo One. Any movement from those survivors? Over.” “They are still holed up in the dog’s home, over. None of them seem to be armed, over.” When no reply was forthcoming from the handset the sniper sent a further message, “Are orders the same as before? Over.” There was the smallest of pauses, before the hand set barked into life once more, “We will be on site in five minutes, over. Should any of those survivors attempt to interfere with our team, you are to eliminate them, over.”
Still frozen in place by the snipers laser sight that glowed as a red dot on her chest, Shanice hadn’t dared to move. She heard her name whispered from behind her and replied that she heard the call, without moving her head. After years of training, and witnessing conflict first hand, a faint noise had been enough to wake Morgan up. He had heard the faintest of noises as the little girl moved around in the window taking in the views, he was about to walk in and chastise the little girl for being up when he spotted the red dot; it had quickly moved along the edge of the window, until it came to rest on Shanice’s chest. “Shanice listen to me.” Morgan told her before adding, “When I count to three, drop to the floor, as quick as you can.” Shanice began to cry with fear, “I don’t know if I can.” She stuttered in between sobs. “Listen Princess, if that sniper wanted to kill you, you would be dead already. One……Two……Three.” She done as she was told, forcing herself down onto the floor on Morgan’s count, and stayed huddled in a ball on the floor.
Morgan was under no illusion that the unseen threat from outside still remained. “Well done Shanice. You’re nearly safe. Now crawl over to me, but stay low.” He calmly instructed her. Without hesitation Shanice again followed Morgan’s instruction to the tee, and although the crawl to her seemed to take an eternity, she was soon safely out of harm’s way. Shanice waited for Morgan to tell her she could stand, and as he did she leapt up into the soldiers waiting arms. He could tell by the way she clung on to him that he needn’t chastise her for sloping off; she had ultimately learnt a much harder way than being verbally disciplined by any of them.
The soldier quickly scooped Shanice up into his arms and carried her to the manager’s office. After waking Kathy and telling her what had happened to Shanice, he told her to wait with the little girl, whilst he gathered up the others. In no time at all he reached the ground floor, calling to the group as he descended. Despite being woken up in the middle of the night each member listened to Morgan and his requests that they stay concealed on the floor. One by one he called their name, asking them to crawl to him, and once they were clear of the big glass windows he told each to run up the stairs and into the back office.
It wasn’t until all of them were safely waiting with Kathy that Morgan could breathe a sigh of relief. He knew that the sniper couldn’t see them from the manager’s office, their vantage point wouldn’t allow it. The only way the sniper could get them back in their scope, was to move. Morgan drew the blinds on the two windows, as a precaution. “What’s to stop them coming for us?” Penny asked, in h
is direction. Before Morgan could answer, Leonard beat him to it, “They’re not here for us.” “Then what Dad?” Leonard looked concerned as he replied, “It would seem that Harper has sent in the professionals to retrieve his codes.”
As the group began to discuss the predicament, a twelve man team, dressed from head to toe in black, silently made their way towards the bunker door. Each wore a modified version of the night vision goggles that the group owned; the only difference was that this teams goggles picked up the cadavers in the dark. The use of thermal settings in an earlier mission had been futile, since the only thing that showed up on the zombies was the blood from their victims as they fed upon the living.
The small lobby entrance was empty, and once all of the soldiers were inside they used a device on the door to lock it behind them. All that now lay before them, was the lift that would lead them down to the bunker below. The first two groups of survivors who had attempted to retrieve the launch codes had made the fatal mistake of using the lift to travel down the shaft; after watching their demise on security cameras mounted within the bunker, this team wouldn’t be so stupid.
Two of the men rigged he doors to open with a push of a button, whilst the rest of the team formed a firing squad with their suppressed weapons held at the ready. As the two soldiers fell back behind the line, one of them pressed the button to bypass the elevator controls. The doors instantly shot open, and the team were not surprised at the six zombies inside the carriage; each was executed with a headshot, before they even knew the doors had opened. None of the elite team spoke to one another; they didn’t need to, as they had gone over and over he plans for the bunker infiltration until the plans were embedded on their mind, like an invisible blueprint. One soldier held up six fingers and motioned towards the zombie filled carriage, and immediately six of the soldiers moved forward; each taking a corpse by its feet, and dragging a body from the back of the blood stained lift.
Once the elevator had been cleared another hand signal directed two men to the carriage’s floor, and they started to cut away at the metal surface with angle grinders that were pulled from their bags. It took just a matter of minutes to slice through the undercarriage, as soon as the cuts met the two soldiers stepped back and were instantly replaced by another two armed men with giant suction devices. A simple click of a button on each machine magnetised the suckers to the floor, and pulling at the crude instrument’s, also pulled free the elevators floor. The floor was carefully carried out of the carriage and left in one of the corners of the lobby. Two more of the men moved forward with two halogen lamps, they had the same type of magnetic suction pads attached to their ends.
The two lamps were fixed to the remaining floor, on the underneath of the carriage, when they were switched on they bathed the entire shaft in white light and that light reached all the way to the bottom of the shaft. The soldier carrying the remote control bypass box hit the second button, and smiled as seconds later the doors at the bottom of the shaft slid open. At first nothing happened below them; all that the soldiers noticed was the smell that the undead carried with them, rose up the shaft and as it intensified it threatened to engulf them. The lead soldier removed a small device from his belt, flicked at the small switch on the top of it and it began to vibrate and emit a low audible beep. The device was tossed through the hole in the carriage’s floor and dropped onto the ground at the bottom of the shaft; it’ armoured casing prevented it from breaking and it continued to beep in the centre of the shaft floor. It only took a few seconds before the first of the zombies came to investigate the strange noise; others soon followed it.
The leader of the team waited patiently, until the elevator shaft was full of the undead, and as soon as it was full, he removed a grenade form his vest, pulled the pin and dropped it into the chasm below. A deafening roar from the explosion ran up the shaft and filled the lobby where he soldiers waited. Some of that noise escaped the bunker and could be heard outside; it was loud enough for the group camped inside the dog home to hear it.
As a second explosion sounded Shanice looked at Morgan with a worried expression etched upon her face, “Are they attacking us?” She asked him. “No Honey, they are trying to break into the bunker.” Morgan tried to reassure the little girl.
Volgograd, Russia, 27th July, 7:18 GMT
The three soldiers shivered from the chill of the morning air as the derelict farmhouse they had slept in offered little resistance to the outside elements. All three of them were fatigued, as well as suffering from lack of food and were dehydrated from the meagre rations of water they had imposed upon themselves in order to survive; that combined with the appalling sleeping conditions they had endured over the past few days ensured that they were at an all-time low in terms of morale. Of the sixteen man Spetsnaz squad that had parachuted into Volgograd, just over a fortnight ago to retrieve a high value politician who was stranded there, this was all that remained.
As soon as the soldiers had landed, they had become aware that their intelligence for the area had been grossly inaccurate. Their superiors had told them that although there had been a few isolated cases of the Day Zed virus that the area was still under the control of the local authorities; in truth the area had been completely overrun, just two days after the first reported case. The high ranking politician they had been sent in to rescue, had been found dead, and slumped across his desk, with a single bullet through his head. Foul play wasn’t in question as the Premier was the only person in the room, and the door was still locked from the inside.
With their mission over, before it had begun the team of soldiers had begun their escape through the zombie infested city. Their extraction point had been designated as the Volga River; the same point where Russian forces had been pushed back to by the Germans during World War Two. This time there was to be no fightback from the city that used to be known as Stalingrad. The zombies had consumed everything in their wake, street by street, until there was no sign of living humanity left. As the horde of undead grew in size, they swept across the landscape attacking everything in sight. Such had been the devastation, across the city that from above it must have looked like a swarm of Locusts attacking the city.
The sixteen men had fought for their very existence, over every mile of their retreat. One by one they had fallen to the endless army of the undead. By the time they had reached the small village that they now sheltered in, only five had remained, along with a few dozen villagers, who had been hiding in their basements. The first wave of zombies stumbled into the village, and the soldiers had fought alongside the villagers, to protect for all what they knew was the last of the Human race. Losses on both sides had been heavy; two of the five soldiers were torn apart, as well as fifteen villagers. Between them the survivors had killed more than a hundred of the deadly cadavers, but their brethren hadn’t felt loss or grief, they surged forwards and replaced the fallen, all they cared for was the taste of warm flesh and blood.
Afanaz shuddered as he thought back to that last battle, and at how helpless the rest of them now were; that along with his colleagues and the nine remaining villagers, they were totally surrounded and that the farmhouse they were now in would probably become their final resting place. So far the two storey farmhouse had held strong; it had been barricaded by its owner, who had then for some reason left its safety to seek other shelter. Looking up through the roofless structure Afanaz afforded himself a smile, wondering if the previous squatter had done all the work securing it, and only then realised the farmhouse had no roof. “Something amusing you Afanaz?” His burley superior Aleksander asked. “No nothing sir.” Aleksander grunted at the young soldiers answer, “Keep focussed soldier. When those barricades finally give away, don’t expect too much help from those farmers downstairs.”
The third of the remaining soldiers rolled over to face his colleagues; it always amazed Afanaz how Igor Nevzorov was always able to sleep anywhere, even in the harshest of conditions. Igor rubbed at his eyes and stretched as he sat u
p, “What are you two arguing about? Can’t you smell that?” He asked them whilst sniffing at the aroma floating in the air. As well as being able to sleep no matter what indifference, Igor had always got away with saying whatever came to mind; the scrawny man who was now in his mid-forties was respected by all of his colleagues, even Aleksander. All three soldiers sat silently, sniffing at the fragrance of something cooking below them. Igor stood up and said to the other two men, “I’m starving. What are you waiting for?” Both shrugged their shoulders and stood, Igor didn’t wait and promptly strode off to seek out the source of the delicious smell.
By the time Afanaz and Aleksander had reached the bottom of the stairwell Igor was already sitting down, around the fire that was burning away, inside of what was left of an old fireplace. It didn’t matter that most of the chimney stack was missing, as the smoke from the fire drifted up into the void where the roof should have been. Inside of the fire was an old fashioned stockpot that was now bubbling away, above the flickering flames. All of the villagers sat in a semi-circle around the fire waiting expectantly for their meal to finish cooking, each sat with an empty bowl and spoon in their laps.
Day Zed - Box Set: Volumes I and II Page 33